Entries by Larkin

I am very close to finishing and submitting my thesis. The write-up phase has been incredible – just a blur, really, as I’ve worked Saturdays and Sundays and have had almost zero down-time. I only seriously got into the write-up in early July, throwing away a lot of what I had written over the past […]

Finishing your first novel is a complicated experience – at least, it was for me. First there is a sense of accomplishment that, however flawed, you completed a substantial work – in my case, a 90,000-word novel. But immediately thoughts should be moving to the next novel (or short stories if you want a change-up), […]

It was a long time coming. I put virtual pen to virtual paper back in late 2009 during the masters in creative writing I did in University of Edinburgh. By the end of that course, I have about 20,000 words of Mickey Bosco novel #1, original title The Long Run Back. Over the next year […]

Concentration on the game continues for the next few days before I return to the thesis. I had a meeting with a subject matter expert (education and physical education), which was really useful – got some good directions to go in terms of theory, etc. and she also gave me the confidence that I am […]

Busy, busy, busy. I’ve been working every spare hour the past few days on getting the important deduction interface working. It’s getting quite close now to a first fully-working prototype (of that deduction interface, not the full game!). At that point, I can start thinking more about game content, the lesson plans, in effect. As […]

The pace is definitely picking up now. I have a bit more free time away from teaching and other duties as the semester draws to a close (though I must correct 30 game essays and a number of game group projects, nearly 40 Spring framework assignments and a number of group Spring web / database […]

General musing One of the most crucial phases in a thesis is arguably settling on a structure and the chapters within that structure. Put simply, it’s the stage when you know what the hell you are doing. I seem to be at that stage now, meaning that there is a marriage now between project plan […]

Over the past 4 weeks I’ve worked on the design of the game and written maybe 1,500 words towards the thesis. With regard to the game design, I have made a fairly big shift away from first-person perspective as can be seen on this previous post. I spent some time playing games, waiting for inspiration […]

Interesting bit of news in the last couple of days with Sharapova’s ban being reduced from 2 years to 15 months and how it has been spun by Sharapova’s PR team. It just adds to the context for the game. With respect to the game design, I purchased a pretty nifty 70s-style office environment that […]